In only three days Sherry had already got used to laid-back Australians but stark-naked ones were definitely a novelty. Especially this Aussie.
She hadn’t been expecting anything quite so…beautiful—not emerging from such a place as this. The shed she had stepped around looked like it had been slapped together with nails and sheets of rusted corrugated iron. When she peeked inside it on her way around to the rear, it was clear that the man she was seeking did indeed live in it, for there was a cot and an old mattress and a folding card table and a few basic living amenities. Very basic. She’d felt a long way from New York at that moment, despite some of the tenements she patrolled being just as run-down and unloved.
She’d heard sounds beyond the shed and rather than step inside, she’d moved around it, for the smell coming from inside the quarters had been less than savory. No wonder the sergeant at the tiny Ningaloo police station had been so reluctant to give her the man’s name.
Mason Hayward.
Sherry stared at the naked man now, the heat of a torrid February morning forgotten as she watched him reach up to the bucket hanging over his head and pull on the rope attached to the lip at the bottom and running up through the same hook that held the bucket.
Water poured over his black hair, dousing him from head to foot, every inch well-tanned. He stood easily six foot two inches and as he controlled the flow of water from the bucket, Sherry assessed his physical fitness, running her gaze over the tight buttocks, the satin-sheened skin spreading over agreeable, wide back muscles as they worked under very little disguising fat. Long legs. The well-developed muscles clenched as he turned. His chest was as pleasing as his back, with hard pecs and heavy shoulders. The biceps were flexed, iron-hard.
As a New York cop, Sherry had long ago lost all shyness around the locker room and her assessing gaze flowed smoothly to his cock and testicles. He was all male, well endowed in a way she had rarely seen.
“Should I be charging admission?” His voice was deep, with a gravelly timbre and the tone was dry and completely devoid of amusement.
She jumped guiltily and forced her gaze to his face. He had eyes the same light blue as the Australian summer sky—transparent and depthless. “I’m sorry—” she began, then halted. There was no way to explain what she had been doing. What had she been doing? She was aware of her heart thudding in a way that she’d almost forgotten. How long had it been since she had felt this sort of racing charge? Abruptly, she became aware of the heat of the day again. It was beating at her temples, making her sweat. The heat was a live thing, curling around her, throbbing in time with her heartbeat.
He reached for a ratty brown towel hanging over a piece of wire hooked into the gutter next to his head. It was a casual movement. He wasn’t trying to cover himself up. Her presence here hadn’t caused him any concern at all. He wrapped the towel around his hips and tucked the corner in to secure it. “If you’re looking for Ningaloo, you need to turn around and head south about five kilometers. You’ve passed it already.” The heat didn’t seem to be bothering him at all but he hadn’t just flown out from the depths of a New York winter, either.
“I’m looking for you,” she told him.
His brow lifted and he smiled, showing white, even teeth. “My lucky day.”
“You’re Mason Hayward, aren’t you?”
Abruptly the smile was gone. He looked up at the sky, shut his eyes briefly, as if reaching for calm. “Bugger it,” he said softly. His gaze, sharp and assessing, fell on her face once more. “Who sent you?” he demanded.
His on-point sharpness surprised her. “H-he made me swear not to tell anyone.”
Anger flicked at his features. “What do you want, then?”
Her gut clenched in response. She had faced down killers with more calm than this. Mason Hayward was radiating fury and danger but of a kind she had no experience with and her Glock was back home in New York. “I need you to take me to Derremawan,” she said quickly, trying to appease him with the answer he wanted. “None of the registered guides will take me there.”
His eyes narrowed. “Derremawan,” he repeated softly and gave a short, sharp exhalation. “Why there, for god’s sake?”
She stared, astonished. “You don’t know why?”
He grimaced. “Indulge me.”
“My sister—” She blinked furiously, fighting back the flood of tears that threatened every time she tried to speak of it. “My baby sister, Pepper, disappeared ten days ago. In her last text message to me, she said she and her boyfriend were going up the trail to Derremawan. The local authorities…they haven’t closed the file but they aren’t pursuing the matter, either. They looked along the trail with a helicopter and they found the car but no…no bodies. And that was the extent of their investigation.”
“So you flew out here from America to do what?” His eyes were drilling her now. It was uncanny the way they seemed to pierce right through her. She knew she should resent the heavy-handed examination but she needed Hayward, so she answered truthfully.
“I’m here to find her.”
He shook his head. “Go home, lady. I’m sorry about your sister but the cops are right. After ten days, they’ll have been out of water long enough to be dead, no matter what.”
“I know that,” Sherry told him as evenly as she could, although the admission wrenched at her. The tears blurred her sight and she blinked again. “I’m not stupid, Hayward. I know I’m a Yank and all that but I know that much. I said I wanted to find her. Not save her. I just want to find her and find out what happened to her. I think—no, I know that foul play was involved.”
His head tilted as he looked at her. “Are you a cop?”
“As it happens, yes, I am. Why?”
“You talk like one. ‘Foul play?’ Do you know the chances of that happening around here? Where are you from in the States?”
“New York,” she said, gritting her teeth against her rising resentment over his casual dismissal and the arrogance behind it. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t born here.
He crossed his arms. “You’ve got over two thousand people per square kilometer there. Here, the official count is less than half a person. If you really think someone was up to no good out there at Derremawan, the chances that a third person came along and did ’em in are laughable. So that just leaves the boyfriend.”
His gaze would not leave her alone. He was skewering her. Making her writhe with guilty shame. Because that had been exactly what she had been thinking on the long, long trip from New York to L.A., to Shanghai, to Singapore, to Perth, then back up to Ningaloo. She had never trusted Ryan to do right by Pepper. Not at all. And her fury had sustained her all the way here.
“I’m betting your parents are both dead and they died a while ago,” Mason Hayward added softly. “And you’ve been mum and dad to your little sister since then.”
She jumped. She couldn’t help it. “Fuck you and the motherfucker who bore you,” she spat, her voice thick with more tears and turned to go. She would find someone else. Anyone but this asshole.
“Wait,” he said gently, his hand on her elbow. “Wait a minute.” He didn’t hurt her but he halted her just the same. There was no arguing with the forced behind his hold.
She kept her head down to hide her tears. Those, she would not let him see.
“How much money have you got?” he said.
Money. She had been warned it would come down to money with him but the confirmation filled her with an inexplicable sadness. She mentally converted the wad of US dollars she had stashed away and said warily, “The equivalent of about two thousand Australian.”
“That’s not going to be enough.”
She looked at him—tears be damned. “No wonder this town hates you. You can add one more to the tally, Hayward. You’ve got the sensitivity of a pack mule.”
She wrenched her elbow out of his grip and walked away from him.
